It is such a simple thing to notice when we observe life closely. When we look around us in nature, or even look at ourselves, we can see growth, we can observe change, however small or apparently insignificant it may seem to our minds, our perceptions, in everyday life. A seed does not remain a seed forever. It blossoms into a flower. It emerges as a tree. It is born in the body and spirit of a child. There exists in every moment a very subtle movement – a movement which implies a journey of something towards something more. An evolution. And yet, do we ask ourselves what this movement of growth, of change, really is? And where is it heading?

In every seed, therein lies the entire blueprint for the future growth and emergence of the potential powers and possibilities of what lies within the depths of the seed. It cannot deviate from its path. Even if that seed should perish in an apparent premature death, that death was meant to be. The seed holds within it its own destiny. Not an entirely fixed, determined destiny, but a broader, wider Destiny which allows for all possibilities and paths to have their potential realization within the One Path that is unfolding everything, always, Eternally and Infinitely.

And yet what is it to say that the Earth has a destiny? Humanity has explored in countless ways their own individual destinies, contemplating their past, their present, and always attempting to foresee the future; it plays with its ideas of free-will, of fate and chance, of life’s purpose and meaning along the lines of so many philosophies and theories and intellectual speculations. We seem to contemplate so many of the pieces, and yet what of the whole? We forget that humanity is merely a small chapter in the story of the Earth, although we do like to think ourselves a much grander, superior achievement. But we are only perhaps the third chapter in the Earth’s Book of Life. And there are infinite volumes beyond awaiting to be revealed and created.

It is the Earth that has shaped us. An Earth not merely material, seemingly unconscious and inert, but an Earth which is as fluid as its waters, as ethereal as its gaseous air, as alive as its multiplicity of plants, insects, animals and humans. An Earth which is itself a seed. A seed that has been sprouting for many ages, which has grown from matter’s unconscious, lifeless elements and particles into the emergence of the single-celled organism – the Earth begins to breathe a little differently. A diversity of microbial insects and plants, fungus, germs and bacteria, alive and breathing. Yet the Earth marches onward like an aspiring worker, shaping itself into more advanced plant-life and bugs, and creatures of a most millennial pursuit – a multitudinous harmony of cellular replications and growth! – towards the ever-larger and almost self-aware creatures and animals who emerge as one more leap of the Earth into a realm of experience which it had not been capable of with the life of plants – a slow-growing mutation into the bare beginnings of Mentality. Not the mentality of humans yet, but still a small leap from the inert stone- life into a more active, dynamic, mobile life: yet another new breath. A slightly more free life in a diverse play of an enhanced vital nature, pursuing the beginnings of Need and Desire, of Instinct and Choice, of enhanced sensitivities and senses, of pleasure and pain, and a striving to survive, to live. And then, again, as its experience widens, increases, the Earth pursues another leap, a fresh experience and perspective of its own existence, its own creativity, its own truth. Humanity becomes the Earth’s next field of play. A humanity which is mental in its very nature, which takes the lower mentality exhibited by the animal and realizes a higher mode of experiencing and perceiving and choosing. An enhanced Mind with an intelligence that questions, explores, chooses according to a little higher vantage point, yet a little wider perspective…….

……Matter begins to look upon Itself ……

…….to observe itself and seek answers about its own existence: The how, the why, the where, the what. The Earth begins to seek knowledge.

And yet a new danger arose with the leap towards a mental humanity. The danger that a small bit of knowledge can have for a Knowledge which is Infinite: imprisonment……suffocation. The human mind grasps at knowledge and sometimes gets lost in its infinity. And so it begins to perceive the world according to the small part it has the capacity to understand. It clings. It divides. It sees many pieces but can’t seem to reconcile the Everything with each other, each part with the Whole.

Mental humanity has perceived itself as separate from the very seed it once appeared from. Matter appears to humanity as something dead and incapable of consciousness, even though its own body, mind, and consciousness arose from the depths of this apparent bedrock and mud. Humanity has lost the inherent sense and vision of Matter’s Destiny, of the Earth’s profound and inevitable Future – which is neither a strictly Material Future nor a Spiritual Future…..but a dynamic Merging and Transcendence of both into……Something Else.